My truck was rear-ended while the hitch was in the receiver. The insurance company required that the entire hitch (including the framework beneath the truck) be replaced. They said there could be stress fractures that would cause it to lose a load on the highway, and replacement was cheaper than assuming liability for possible failure.
FWIW: The pic in my earlier post is old. My new truck and trailers are far larger now (new boat weighs 12,500 lbs. and requires wide load signs) and require much heavier hitches. These are sometimes so heavy I cannot remove them without help or a lift so they stay on the truck for a short time. I stick one of these on the hitch so everyone sees a bright yellow ball as they approach (or reverse towards it). I hate banging my shins on a hitch too, so I figure it’s best to give everyone a warning.
My pet peeve lately has been these dillholes who make a right turn onto the main road-right in front of you. Then can’t even be arsed to promptly give it a modicum of gas so as to quickly match the flow of traffic. I’m toodling along at 50, they pull out and promptly start going 25. Even had one which did a u-turn right in front of me the other day. Extra bonus points if it painfully obvious that they are dithering (inch forward, stop, inch forward, stop) before they finally decide to pull out. “Oh, should I pull out-and deliberately block that guy, or wait? Go, wait, go, wait, ah the hell with it, going…”
This. I lived in Carson City for a while and commuted to north Lake Tahoe. Several times every winter I’d get passed by someone who hadn’t learned that, “4WD helps you go on slick surfaces; don’t do shit to help you stop,” and a half-mile later they’d be nose-in a ditch or snowbank.
Most people back out slowly. I have seen many times, a driver starting the maneuver as I am entering the lot will still be in the process when I reach them.
I much prefer backing in, at places like banks and post offices.
When backing out your view is limited by multiple blind spots. You have to watch the cars on either side and across the lot. And clueless people walking through your intended path from all sides and every angle.
Current pet peeve is people who drive without their headlights on.
They’re in Seattle, in February. It is dark outside. I don’t care that it’s technically “daytime,” they haven’t seen the sun in the better part of three months and still they drive making their cars less visible. Why? Why would they do that? Just turn the lights on.
The same reason they drive around here in thick fog with no lights on, which also renders them invisible to other drivers until they’re right on top of them - they are idiots.
That reminds me of another peeve: people who think their daytime running lights are all they need in the rain/fog/dusk/etc.
So many times I’ve passed someone whose car is nearly invisible from the back, and thought “how do they not have their lights on?!?”…and it turns out their DRLs are on.
People who get an attitude about being passed. What did you think, you were somehow at the very front of all traffic everywhere?!
I just got back from a long road trip through The South and Florida last week and encountered this nearly everywhere: getting chased down by someone I’d passed miles ago, only for them to slow back down enough, after getting just a hundred feet or so in front of me, that I’d have to pass them again, repeat until one of us got off the highway.
Maybe they had a radar detector (or a Waze feed noting the positions of any police). But yeah-on Saturday this guy kept dicking with me like that (me right lane, him left), he’d pass me, slow down, I’d inch ahead, over and over… Eventually after he did it one more time I just said the hell with it and floored it and left him eating my dust.
I attribute this more to poor speed control than actual irritation at being passed. I really hate being on the road with a “speed up, slow down” driver. I set my cruise, so I know for sure it’s the other driver. Just pick a speed and stick to it!
Footnote: I made sure all of my kids could maintain the same speed for long distances before letting them use the cruise control. I consider it an important part of being a goo driver.
I was running Waze and I have a 6th sense for detecting cops. These people were definitely chasing me down. At several points I gunned it and was traveling at about 100 for some time, leaving everyone in the dust, and every time at least two other drivers took off after me (this was all very late at night, BTW, so the roads, in these cases I-85 and I-95N, were as low-traffic as they ever are). One would eventually give up, or exit the highway, but the other wouldn’t ever let it go. It wasn’t important to me so I’d just let them go by, only to run into them again ten minutes later. This whole scenario played out over and over again all the way up I-95N from Jacksonville all the way to DC. What the fuck is wrong with people?!
Is it worth noting these people, almost without exception, had New York plates?
I find I pass a lot of people using cruise mostly because of hills. Most people don’t consciously compensate for the car slowing down when the road starts going uphill (or don’t even realize the road is going uphill), while my cruise control maintains a steady speed and I will blast past them, even if it’s set right at or even below the speed limit.
I remember an old Steve Martin bit from his standup days. He’d rant a bit about tailgaters and how annoying they are. Then he’d say that the other thing that annoys him are slow drivers who refuse to speed up, no matter how closely you follow them.
They were using you for radar bait. If you want to speed, pick another driver who is speeding and match his speed, staying slightly behind so that when they get pegged by a cop, he pulls out behind him before you pass him.
My pet peeve:
Around here lots of drivers seem to have a notable lack of depth perception or they are so distracted by their phones that they fail to notice that they’ve stopped more than a car length behind the car in front of them or the crosswalk. It’s not that huge of a deal except in heavy traffic when several of them have effectively extended the length of traffic to prevent multiple vehicles from entering a very busy turn lane and making them miss the light. This only amplifies the gridlock as drivers must wait through multiple light cycles unnecessarily if those other drivers would have just closed the gap at the red light. I’m not saying you have to be mere inches from the bumper of the car in front of you, but 10 feet is fucking ridiculous.
Yes! Both the ones in the lane in which you want to zipper merge who are punishing you for using the available lane as well as the ones in the ending lane who decide they must merge into the continuing lane RIGHT NOW by coming to a complete stop more than a mile up the road from where the lane ends and expecting traffic in the moving lane next to them to stop as well to let them in.
If they would also time the lights to allow cars which have already entered the intersection to get all the way through before the cross-traffic light turns green, that’d be great, too.
^ OMG THIS!! My neighborhood has a similar situation, but there’s no light, and the road out is right and left only. I cannot TELL you how many times on the way out, somebody pulls my right OR left (depending on which way I am turning), and pulls forward to completely block my view of the road. I might be able to cut some slack on this if they were there first, but they aren’t.
I want to roll down my window and scream “HEY AHOLE! I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!!” but then my prefrontal cortex takes over.
I’ve driven all over the world (various parts of the US, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa). I recently moved to North Dakota; the driver’s here are better than most, with one annoying exception: they MUST pass ME or pull out in front of ME. I drive an old, cosmetically challenged car* (in tip top mechanical condition) and am convonced that there must be a rule in ND that trafiic will be arranged with the newest vehicles in front, oldest in back. In case of a tie, the vehicle closest to “truck” should precede the other vehcle. 9 times out of 10, I pass them shortly after they pass me and slow down or pull out in front of me.
